USAfrica
THE RITUAL OF THE TERRORISTS HANDOVER 
and THE DEATH OF DETERRENCE IN KATSINA
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Shae Bebeyi @ Curiously Yours Arena.
An African proverb says “When the goat delivers yam directly into the leopard’s den, know that the farmer himself has become a leopard.”
THE EMBASSY OF TERROR ON SOVEREIGN SOIL:
The official handover of the body of Major General Abubakar Rabe to the Katsina State Government (in mid-June 2025) was not a moment of mourning; it was a ritual of humiliation. It was a calculated, theatrical display of asymmetric dominance.
When a non-state actor —a syndicate of bloodthirsty bandits and kidnappers—can walk into government-controlled soil, fully armed, to conduct a quasi-military surrender of a General’s corpse, and then calmly walk away without an ambush, an arrest, or an exchange of gunfire, the nation has crossed a perilous threshold. This goes far beyond the standard rhetoric of “security lapses” or “operational failure.” It is an explicit message written in the blood of our highest military ranks.
The message from the bandits is clear, loud, and entirely devoid of fear:
> “We have no regard for a General’s stars. We cannot be intimidated. There are no consequences for our actions because we are the parallel state. We kill, we capture, we dictate, and we deliver.
This unprecedented choreography reveals a terrifying truth. As the ancient proverb notes, “the serpent’s movement is being directed by unseen inner legs”. This is an elite conspiracy designed to establish a completely failed state, orchestrated by a powerful network of insider diplomats, compromised politicians, and religious bigots who understand state protocols and pull the strings from the shadows.
OUTSOURCING THE SOUL OF THE STATE
In contemporary Nigeria, the Terms of Engagement have been completely turned upside down. The bandits now hold the pen that writes the rules of engagement. They alone decide whom to hunt, when to strike, which territory to occupy, and when to extend the favour of negotiation. The state has effectively outsourced its soul.
The decision of the Katsina State Government to repeatedly pursue a policy of “amnesty” and financial accommodation with unrepentant terrorists is both a moral failure and a systemic disaster. To offer dialogue to an armed group that just murdered a Major General is an act of institutional cowardice. It does not bring peace; it subsidizes criminality. It tells the bandit that his leverage is working and that the state is too weak to enforce its own laws.
The master of strategy, Sun Tzu, famously wrote in The Art of War:
> “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
The tragedy of the Nigerian state is that we do not know ourselves. We are completely divided by internal compromises, while the bandits know us intimately. They know our weaknesses, our lack of political will, and our institutional corruption. We have engineered a republic where the criminals are bold, and the state behaves like a coward.
THE ANATOMY OF A CHARADE: THREE SYSTEMIC CASUALTIES
The unchallenged delivery of General Rabe’s body exposes three catastrophic institutional failures:
The Death of Deterrence.
When a state fails to unleash immediate, overwhelming kinetic force upon a criminal group that has breached its territory to deliver the body of a murdered commander, deterrence is dead. The state’s monopoly on the instruments of violence has been completely dismantled.
Psychological Warfare Won
By executing this handover without receiving an immediate military response, the bandits won a massive psychological victory. They demonstrated to every soldier on the frontlines and every citizen in the villages that they own the roads, they write the rules, and they control the state’s fear.
Total Intelligence Capitulation.
The unhindered transit, safe delivery, and unmolested exit of these heavily armed actors point directly to complicity at the highest levels. It is structurally impossible for such a movement to occur without the active compliance, silent approval, or deliberate blind spots created by elements within our political and security architectures.
THE COMPLICITY OF THE ELITE
This is the grand charade of the upper class. The political establishment continues to issue pre-packaged press statements expressing “shock and condemnation”, while practicing a policy of active appeasement behind closed doors.
The legendary pan-African theorist Frantz Fanon once warned:
“The future of a country depends on the political consciousness of its citizens… Greatness does not come from the titles of leaders, but from the unyielding protection of the collective sovereignty.”
Right now, that sovereignty is being systematically bartered away. We are watching a slow-motion surrender where the elite choose to tolerate terror as a tool for regional control rather than enforcing absolute constitutional law.
WRITING A NEW REALITY
The newspapers and media houses across the country must refuse to bury this tragedy in the archives of history. We will not allow the memory of this institutional humiliation to fade into the background noise of the daily news cycle.
We will continue to speak truth to power. We will keep printing the hard facts and exposing the deep rot until the dynamic completely shifts.
The political, traditional and religious leaders must be forced to realize that the VIP section of this burning house has completely collapsed. The strategy of silent compromise will eventually consume those who think they are safe.
We will continue to write, to report, and to hold the state accountable until the day this tragic script is completely rewritten. The inscription on the doors of our Government Houses must change.
We will not stop until the current reality is inverted, and it is finally written across our national walls:
“AND THE BANDITS DIED” …instead of “AND THE MAJOR GENERAL DIED.” Until that day of absolute reckoning, silence is nothing less than treason
